On the eleventh day of Christmas, Spin Sucks gave to me…11 software and tools, 10 books for communicators, nine PR pros to follow, eight podcasts to subscribe to, seven blogs to read, six online courses, five effective storytelling rules, four productivity tools, three books on writing, two marketing trends, and a professional goal for 2019. Software and tools? Softwares and tools? I think software. You know what I mean! Here we are…closing in on the end of our 12 Days of Christmas series. One of the things we discuss at great length quite often in the Spin Sucks community, is the software and tools everyone uses. So, rather than have you dig through many conversations, I thought I’d put it all right here for you. You’re welcome. Here are the 11 software and tools you must be using in 2019! Software and Tools: Active Campaign A few years ago, we graduated from Mailchimp (which I recommend until you get to about 10,000 subscribers) and went straight into Active Campaign.
Because of the work we do for clients, we had experience using HubSpot, Infusionsoft (or Infusionhard, as I call it), Marketo, and Rainmaker. ActiveCampaign, hands-down, was far easier to understand, implement, and use almost immediately. No week-long, in-person training. No 7,500 hours (slight exaggeration) of online training. Just set it up and go! We love it. The only thing I don’t love is the “deal” section Diabetes Email List is supposed to be a CRM, but it won’t work for our needs (see Nutshell below). So keep that in mind if you’re looking for an all-in-one package. Software and Tools: Brand24 Discover what people are saying online about your brand—as it unfolds in real time. Brand24 gives you instant access to mentions about your brand across the web, from social networks to influential publishers. They also provide an influencer score, which helps you identify people with the most social influence—especially as it relates to your brand. AND their sentiment analysis is some of the best I’ve ever seen.
Rarely do we have to manually recategorize mentions. Best of all? It integrates with Slack. Yippee! If you’re looking for a new media and social media monitoring tool for 2019, we love Brand24! (I personally am in there multiple times a day and I don’t handle our social media. Which means at least three of us on my team use it multiple times a day. It’s that good!) Software and Tools: BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is an influencer research and monitoring tool that we can’t live without. It allows you to: Find content that is most shared on social media channels. Just enter your domain or another, and see what has been shared that site on the social networks. Find influencers related to particular topics, from grass feed and pig’s tails to business leadership and marketing. You need a topic? They have it! Get alerts based on keywords, brand name, links, author name, or domain. Track competitors and do an analysis based on their content. They also are constantly introducing new features and roll out new tutorials several times a year. Want to try them out in 2019? They are our 30-Day Communications Challenge partner and have a discount for anyone who buys this year’s eBook.